ORWELL STRIKES AGAIN, THIS TIME AT THE US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

In his prescient novel, 1984, George Orwell introduced the world to Newspeak, a minimized and simplified revision of English designed to make nuanced, reasoned, independent thought impossible.

Inspired by our current president and his climate-change denial, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)--the agency whose mission is to guide and enhance American agriculture, conserve and improve the rural environment, and help feed America and the world--has decided to outlaw phrases such as "climate change," "climate change adaptation," "reduce greenhouse gases," and "sequester carbon." Newspeak is alive and well at the USDA.

Flooding in New Orleans--yet again

Credit: www.goodfreephotos.com

Those now-forbidden terms are to be replaced in official communication by what Orwell would call "goodthink"--terms approved by the all-powerful Party. "Climate change" becomes "weather extremes" or "intense weather events," "climate change adaptation" becomes "resilience to weather extremes," while "reduce greenhouse gases" and "sequester carbon" become "build soil organic matter" or the mind-numbing "increase nutrient use efficiency."

Wildfire, Black Forest, Colorado, June 12, 2013
Credit: DoD--photo by Master Sgt. Christopher DeWitt, U.S. Air Force

In Oldspeak--plain old English--it's at least possible to think and speak clearly about the global problem of climate change and ways to minimize or adapt to it. But, in Newspeak, in Trump's Department of Agriculture, that's now a thoughtcrime, or, better yet, simply unthinkable.

The flash drought that's currently decimating the high plains' wheat crop is simply an isolated weather extreme. It can't be linked to the raging wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, flooding in New Orleans, the fact that Virginia's Tangier Island is washing away or that Death Valley just experienced the hottest month ever measured anywhere on Earth. The concept that ties these "weather extremes" together no longer exists, at least at the USDA.

You can see this in action at the EPA, where scientists explaining how climate change has added to the destructive power of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey are being accused of politicizing the storm. In other words, understanding is politicizing. Remaining ignorant is the right thing to do.

 Credit: Stephen Bettany

One of the three guiding slogans of the Party in 1984 was "Ignorance is Strength." If that's true, Trump's USDA is certainly flexing its muscles.

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You can read environmentalist Bill McKibben's comments  on this issue here.

You can read about an outbreak of Trump-mandated Newspeak at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here, or at this URL.Newly banned words and phrases include "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based." I, for one, start to feel pretty vulnerable when concepts like "evidence-based" and "science-based" are banned. What will replace them? The Republican party line? Trump's latest whim?

Part of the CDC's "Pledge to the American People" is to "Base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively." They should amend that to read, "Base all public health decisions on the current political directives from the President and his appointees, derived behind closed doors to advance a partisan agenda."

And you can see how far this fascist penchant for censoring words and ideas can go in this recent news item about the censorship of words, phrases and internet search terms in China. Just to put the cork in the bottle, they've banned references to George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm.

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AMERICA’S ‘FORGOTTEN WAR’ -- KOREA 1950-1953

The costly lessons of America’s ‘Forgotten War’ are being ignored once again.

Two thirds of a century ago, American lack of understanding of complex Asian realities coupled with a large dose of military hubris embroiled the country in a Korean conflict which nearly escalated into a nuclear-enabled World War III.

Responding to a reckless North Korean attempt to reunify the artificially divided peninsula by force, President Truman, with United Nations backing, authorized Far Eastern Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, to defend the South and drive the attackers back across the 38^th Parallel. MacArthur’s brilliant Inchon landing succeeded in beating back the intruders, liberating Seoul and re-establishing a pro-Western government in the South.

General Douglas MacArthur
Public Domain-author unknown

Encouraged by his victories, however, MacArthur pushed well beyond his orders and pressed the attack northward with the goal of destroying the Northern armies and defeating the Communist-dominated State. The effect of his actions, while aimed at reunifying the peninsula in America’s favor, also directly challenged the newly-established Red Chinese government by threatening military action up to and potentially beyond the Chinese border in Manchuria.

Ignoring Chinese warnings as well as overt directions from more cautious diplomatic and military leaders in Washington, MacArthur’s miscalculation triggered the surprising and overwhelming Communist Chinese response which led to an additional three years of costly and bloody land warfare in Asia leading the death of more than 36,000 U.S. soldiers—ending with the uneasy stalemate which has existed for nearly 65 years at the same 38^th Parallel where the conflict began.

Bodies of U.S., U.K., and ROK soldiers 
before mass burial at Koto-ri,1950 

(Photo by Sgt. F. C. Kerr)

Currently, a newly energized American leader, without foreign policy experience and with a tendency to make provocative and aggressive statements ("if China won’t help, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A”) and also led by generals is currently convinced that the show of and possible use of overwhelming military force, rather than diplomacy, will succeed in defanging the rhetorically aggressive and now nuclear-armed North. In the process, it runs the risk of pushing the ever more paranoid leadership in Pyongyang toward a point of no return where the slightest miscalculation, a missile test gone astray, a nuclear test, a misreading of intentions, may trigger unintended and disastrous military results.

Once again U.S. leadership is relying on the tenuous belief that China, Russia or others will not intervene—even if the United States acts unilaterally to destroy the North’s capacity to employ weapons of mass destruction-- or that unanticipated events in a newly-destabilized region will not widen the conflict well beyond Korea.

While analysts have been comparing theevolving conflict to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a much more apt comparison should be that of Korea in 1950 and 1951, when an ambitious and arrogant General blundered into a world of trouble neither he nor the American people ever fully expected or understood.

Les Adler, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of History and Interdisciplinary Studies

Sonoma State University

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